Love vs Fear
by math music reading
Summary: What happens, when it's not love?


He's not tall, but he's dark and handsome: his skin as pale as new fallen snow, his hair as dark as a raven's secret heart, and with nearly colorless, jewel-clear eyes.

She lets him in readily.

.

.

.

"Petra!" Levi's voice breaks through the silence, a passionate cry in the night. The sky is not yet light and Levi's panting breath fills the quiet. Faint birdsong in the distance announces the coming of dawn.

Her door is unlocked, and relief and horror mingle in his gut as Levi rushes inside. Her house is still, dark and silent.

"Petra!"

He finds her on the floor, curled into a ball in the corner of her living room. Her eyes are staring, wide, and she rocks back and forth. Levi kneels down and gently touches her shoulder, and she jerks violently.

"Get away from me!" She slaps his hand away and scrambles backwards, squeezing herself even further into the corner. She curls further into herself when he retreats, her faced turned away, inwards, buried.

"Petra, Petra, it's me. It's Levi," he entreats, his voice revealing his own brokenness at the sight of her, small and shaking. "What happened?"

Petra stills and looks up at him. "It was you." She slowly unwraps her tightly curled body and stands, carefully, as if she is unsure she can. "Don't, don't touch me." Levi withdraws his hand.

He watches in silence as she shakily makes her way to turn on the light and enter the kitchen. She turns on the light there too. Petra pulls out her teapot, fills it with water, and turns on the stove. Her movements are fragile all the while, but she refuses to hold on to the walls or furniture. She keeps her head down, but she never fully turns her back on him and Levi can tell she never lets him out of her sight.

He breaks the silence. "About fifteen minutes ago, I woke to the alarm spells in my house going off. They indicated that danger was approaching your home, and then suddenly they stopped. I Changed and flew here as fast as I could." His voice grows more and more urgent as he continues to speak. "I didn't see anything unusual, but your door was unlocked, and you were _lying on the ground_. Please. Petra. What happened?"

She ignores him for the now whistling teapot—turning down the flame, adding the broken tea leaves in their infuser, assembling the mugs and procuring a spoon. She does this all with precise movements, efficient and controlled, normal except for her brusque manner. The mugs are the taller ones with the wide, sloping rims and relatively lower handles to accommodate his drinking habits. The ones she bought after they started dating.

The tea steeped, Petra removes the infuser ball and puts it on a plate, pours the tea, stirs the cups and places the spoon in the sink. At last she turns and hands Levi a mug. She leaves him standing at the edge of the kitchen by the refrigerator, walking around and sitting behind the kitchen counter.

Petra sips her tea and turns to look out the window at the now lightening sky. "You know I rise early, while it's still dark out." She looks down at her swirling black tea, clutching her mug in her hands and letting the heat sear her skin. "It's darkest before the dawn."

She takes a deep breath and looks up at him, directly in the eyes and piercing. "It was you. You knocked at my door and I thought you had just been out for a nocturnal flight and had come to visit me because you couldn't sleep. I welcomed you in and you closed the door and cupped my head in your hands. But you didn't cradle me. Your grip was like a vice and when you looked in my eyes—"

Levi instinctively moves towards Petra when she shudders, but she flinches away and it stops him cold.

She sets down her mug with a decisive clink and charges forward with her account. "Suddenly I was assaulted by visions and voices, and your skin melted away and you grew taller and your ears grew long and pointed. I tried to break away and I stumbled backwards, but I couldn't break your gaze or the contact. You, the thing that had been you, pressed forward with me and bore me to the ground when I stumbled and fell. I tried to crawl backwards, away, but I couldn't move and my mind was being consumed.

It was an eotena demon. An ancient one since it only came for me at the very darkest time of night. I must have disturbed and attracted it somehow working on the latest investigation.

It forced me to experience terror as I fled on horseback, chased by a titanic monster. It had already murdered many people behind me and I left them to their gruesome deaths, continuing forward. I was riding with you, and the new intern Eren, and Erd and Gunther and Auruo, and I knew we needed to fight together. I knew I trusted all of you and we could do it together. I knew _you and I_ loved each other, and focusing on _that love_ was the only way to repel the eotena demon.

But you left. The you in the vision left and the vision kept going and I was still trapped in it. I had to experience the trauma of you _abandoning_ us, abandoning _me_, and knowing I couldn't escape. Fighting was _futile_. _I was helpless—I couldn't **protect anyone** and I had to watch them all **die**._

I couldn't avenge them or take down the monster either. I had to experience the trauma of my own death and the ignominious ease and cavalier with which the monster dispatched us. She enjoyed it too. She was a reflection of the real eotena demon feeding on the fear and despair he induced in me.

It wasn't just the vision or the death. It was the voices, his soul-rending and overpowering voice, and his words tearing me apart. And his _making my mind_ repeat the same things, using _my voice_ and _my memories_ and _pulling out other people's voices_ with twisted words. _Not only turning my own body against me but my own mind. Telling me that I was weak, hopeless, nothing._ Even telling me how I _couldn't even fight knowing his visions and words weren't true_, that they were _lies_ and I _was_ loved and _did_ have love and _did_ have strength. What he showed me and what he told me _**was the truth—because I couldn't fight him.**_ I was _wrong_ and I _**was nothing**_ and I _**had nothing**_. And I couldn't fight it and I could feel his sadistic pleasure from my distress and pain and fear.

It was an instant and it was eternity. He drained me and left before he could be endangered by the coming light of the sun. And I crawled further into the corner of the room and further into myself and further into the labyrinth in my mind, still trapped as he had left me.

And it was your face he used and your abandonment and your voice. You didn't protect me. You weren't here. You didn't come. You didn't save me.

I, I know how this works Levi. I know it's not your fault or mine. I'm going to take a few days off work, hand off the investigation, warn the others, find someone who can help me. But I can't stand to look at you or be near you or talk with you right now. And I don't know where I want us to go with our relationship. So just."

She finally looks away.

"Get out."

*Appendix:

Some worldbuilding and exposition since it wasn't very clear, Petra and Levi here are very like Lieutenant Karrin Murphy and Harry Dresden respectively from _The Dresden Files_ by Jim Butcher. Levi is a wizard who consults for the police but he's more of a minor talent; he's self-taught, knowledgeable but lacking in resources and still growing his power. He's good friends with Petra and started dating her about a year ago. Petra is a police officer who investigates supernatural and unexplainable crime, and she's performing much the same work her father did before he committed suicide. Her mother refused to talk about it and later disowned Petra when she chose to join the force to protect the weak and innocent. Thus Petra's abandonment issues and her relationship with Levi being her only possible source of true love to ward off the eotena demon.

* * *

><p>AN: I wrote this in response to "You're in a happy relationship, and you and your partner think you love each other. But in an encounter with a being whose weakness is true love, you find yourself unprotected. Do you break off the relationship, or work on it?" If you have a response I'd love to hear it!

The tropes I'm using here (feeding on fear, vulnerability to love, needing an invitation, mind rape, disguise as a loved one, evil fleeing sunrise, birdsong marking dawn, shapeshifting) are all standard, old tropes of fantasy and folklore. If you're interested in that kind of thing, I highly suggest you read _The Dresden Files_. The series is contemporary fantasy about a wizard living in Chicago and it's _amazing_. Also hilarious.

Just so you know, I made Levi Change into a peregrine falcon for its speed, size and coloring, and aggression and martial prowess. It's also quite common, so it's a good choice for Levi as a shapeshifter. The fact that it's host to a range of parasites and pathogens is why Levi's fastidious about hygiene.

And one last note, after writing this I retroactively realized it makes a very fitting conversion of "The Reluctant Heroes" into Petra's Theme both as singer and subject.

Disclaimer: The beautiful "a raven's secret heart" is a quote from Issue #122 of _Fables_, and "jewel-clear eyes" is from a description of Tamlio from _Mistress of the Empire_, _Empire Trilogy_ Book #3 by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts.


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